France/Iraq: Lara Marlowe in Paris meets unapologetic representatives of the Iraqi insurgency
Exiled representatives of the political wing of "the resistance" in Iraq, men like Shihab al-Sarraf and Awni Kalemji, describe a conflict totally different from the one seen on western television screens.
These self-styled Iraqi patriots say those who have slaughtered thousands of civilians are US, Israeli or Iranian agents, that Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the putative head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is a figment of the Americans' imagination and Saddam Hussein is still the legal president of Iraq.
They believe "the resistance" is noble and attacks only legitimate targets, and that the insurgency has the support of the vast majority of Iraqis - Shia and Kurdish as well as Sunni.
Shihab al-Sarraf is close to Sheikh Hareth al-Dari, the Iraqi theologian who founded the Sunni Muslim Association of Ulemas and a confederation of tribal sheikhs soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003.
Sheikh Hareth now lives in hiding in Baghdad. "This summer, after Sheikh Hareth declared that atrocities were being committed by the Badr Brigades, the Shias in the government decided to liquidate him," al-Sarraf explains. "We were tipped off by a source in the government."
The Badr Brigades are an Iranian-backed militia whose former leader, Bayan Jabr Sulagh, is now Iraq's interior minister. Residents of Sunni neighbourhoods like Aadamiya say Sulagh's men have seized, tortured and summarily executed dozens of Sunni Muslims.
Just clicking onto a website like albasrah.net, alkader.net or islammemo.cc - sites that support "the resistance" - is grounds for arrest, al-Sarraf says. "They kill people by drilling holes in their heads. Since Sulagh was appointed, the pace of the atrocities has become insane."
For their part, "the resistance" now mobilises units of up to 200 men at a time, al-Sarraf continued. "At any moment, they can take control of any area. It is impossible to catch them, which is why the population call them 'z'bag' - Arabic for mercury." al-Sarraf attended a meeting of 108 Iraqi supporters of the insurgency in Beirut last month. All strands of opposition to the occupation were present: "some discreet military observers", leftists, Islamists, Ba'athists, and a representative of the Shia leader Moqtada Sadr.
The opponents of the US-backed government know their adversaries intimately. When they were both exiled members of the Iraqi communist party, al-Sarraf shared a flat in Poitiers with Adel Abdel Mehdi, now Iraq's vice-president and a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) - the party that founded the Badr Brigades.
Awni Kalemji, another opposition figure interviewed separately in Paris, was a captain in the Iraqi army who participated in numerous coup attempts, including one with Jalal Talabani, now president of Iraq.
Kalemji is the spokesman for the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, whose leader Abdel Jabr al-Qubaissi has been imprisoned by US forces at Baghdad airport for the past year.
Kalemji was at school with Saddam Hussein, and later served two years in prison with him. He returned to Iraq in November 2002 in an attempt to persuade Saddam to reach a compromise that might avoid war. "We were told the regime would be overthrown, and that the Iraqi government had prepared the resistance," Kalemji recalls. "We visited 10 or 11 cities in Iraq. Every house was full of weapons."
Both al-Sarraf and Kalemji deny "the resistance" has anything to do with bombings like the one that killed more than 100 people in the Shia neighbourhood of Kazimiya on September 14th. Al-Sarraf says US and Iraqi officials always claim these atrocities are the work of suicide bombers, but asks why, after hundreds of alleged suicide bombings, not a single bomber has been identified.
Kalemji goes further. "I know who has attacked Shia, Christian and Kurdish civilians," he says. "It is not the Iraqi resistance. The Americans brought with them 20,000 mercenaries. Iranian intelligence and Mossad are also doing these attacks, because they want to make a civil war. If you ask any Iraqi in the streets of Baghdad who is doing this, they will tell you it is Israel or Iran or the mercenaries."
So how does "the resistance" chose its targets? "American and British troops and any other troops involved with them are legitimate targets," Kalemji says. "Second, the Iraqi government and what they call 'the patriotic army'. This is a militia belonging to Talabani's peshmerga, Abdel Aziz Hakim (the leader of SCIRI) and (Ahmad) Chalabi (a Shia politician). The police are also a target, because they serve American troops, not Iraqis."
Not all government employees are targets. "Someone who worked for the government before and still works in the same department will be left alone," al-Sarraf says. "A collaborator is someone who gets money from the occupiers."
Al Sarraf insists that "the resistance" does not kill needlessly. "The Iraqi resistance choose their targets. They send a collaborator three warning letters before they take action. A close friend of mine was in a cafe in Baghdad when he heard shots. They hit the man next to him, and no one else. They don't use machine guns; they shoot at close range, and they never miss their targets. This is not the case of the mass killings by the Badr Brigades."
And who kidnaps and beheads westerners in Iraq? "I'm not sure," Kalemji said. "But I don't care how they kill people who co-operate with the occupiers. My people were killed with napalm at Tal Afar (the border town which US and Iraqi troops seized this month). We lost two million people in 13 years of sanctions. Nobody said they were sorry . . . If someone is killed by mistake, it's not a big deal. If 100 journalists are released because they are innocent, and one is killed by mistake, I don't care."
I asked Kalemji how he would react if I were kidnapped in Iraq. "As long as you're alive, I'll defend you," he said with a chilling laugh. "And if they kill you, I'll say I'm sorry."